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hold him whose trophies have eclipsed the fame of the proudest conquerors of the world." Then would the heart of the monarch rejoice that it had not lived to witness the decay of his kingdom, the ruin and extinction of his subjects.

With remorseless energy the hand of Time has indeed set its withering mark on the desolated island of Ithaca. Her proud palaces he has crumbled to the dust, nor has he spared even the inhabitants themselves. He has deadened their zeal, lowered their character, and rendered them a sad memorial of all that was once great and commanding; and perhaps the island and its inhabitants were never so thoroughly degraded as by a circumstance that has lately occurred; when Ithaca, that in former times had equipped thousands of gaily burnished warriors, was taken, not by an army of veterans proportioned to its former notoriety, but by an army consisting of seven English soldiers and a serjeant.

BURIAL PLACES NEAR CONSTANTINOPLE.

A DENSE and motionless cloud of stagnant vapours ever shrouds these dreary realms. From afar a chilling sensation informs the traveller that he approaches their dark and dismal precincts; and as he enters them, an icy blast, rising from their inmost bosom, rushes forth to meet his breath, suddenly strikes his chest, and seems to oppose his progress. His very horse snuffs up the deadly effluvia with signs of manifest terror, and, exhaling a cold and clammy sweat, advances reluctantly over a hollow ground, which shakes as he treads it, and loudly re-echoes his slow and fearful step. So long and so busily has time been at work to fill this chosen spot,— so repeatedly has Constantinople poured into this ultimate receptacle almost its whole contents, that the capital of the living, spite of its immense population, scarce counts a single breathing inhabitant for every ten silent inmates of this city of the dead. Already do its

fields of blooming sepulchres stretch far away on every side, across the brow of the hills and the bend of the valleys; already are the avenues which cross each other at every step in this domain of death so lengthened, that the weary stranger, from whatever point he comes, still finds before him many a dreary mile of road between marshalled tombs and mournful cypresses ere he reaches his journey's seemingly receding end; and yet every year does this common patrimony of all the heirs to decay still exhibit a rapidly increasing size, a fresh and wider line of boundary, and a new belt of young plantations, growing up between new flower-beds of graves.

As I hurried on through this awful repository, the pale far-stretching monumental ranges rose in sight, and again receded rapidly from my view in such unceasing succession, that at last I fancied some spell possessed my soul, some fascination kept locked my senses; and I therefore still increased my speed, as if only on quitting these melancholy abodes I could hope to shake off my waking delusion. Nor was it until, near the verge of the funeral forest through which I had been pacing for a full hour, a brighter light again gleamed athwart the ghost-like trees, that I stopped to look round, and to take a more leisurely survey of the ground which I had traversed.'

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"There," said I to myself, "lie, scarce one foot beneath the surface of a swelling soil, ready to burst at every point with its festering contents, more than half the generations whom death has continued to mow down for near four centuries in the vast capital of Islamism. There lie, side by side, on the same level, in cells the size of their bodies, and only distinguished by a marble turban somewhat longer or deeper-somewhat rounder or squarer, personages in life far as heaven and earth asunder in birth, in station, in gifts of nature, and in long laboured acquirements. There lie, sunk alike in their last sleep,-alike food for the worm that lives on death-the conqueror who filled the universe with his name, and the peasant scarce known in his own hamlet;

sultan Mahmoud, and sultan Mahmoud's perhaps more deserving horse; elders bending under the weight of years, and infants of a single hour; men with intellects of angels, and men with understandings inferior to those of brutes; the beauty of Georgia, and the black of Sennaar; viziers, beggars, heroes, and women. There perhaps mingle their insensible dust the corrupt judge and the innocent he condemned, the murdered man and his murderer, the adulteress and her injured husband, the master and his meanest slave. There vile insects consume the hand of the artist, the brain of the philosopher, the eye which sparkled with celestial fire, and the lip from which flowed irresistible eloquence. All the soil pressed by me for the last two hours was once animated like myself; all the mould which now clings to my feet once formed limbs and features similar to my own. Like myself, all this black unseemly dust once thought, and willed, and moved!—And I, creature of clay like those here cast around; I, who travel through life as I do on this road, with the remains of past generations strewed along my trembling path; I who, whether my journey last a few hours more or less, must still, like those here deposited, shortly rejoin the silent tenants of some cluster of tombs, be stretched out by the side of some already sleeping corpse, and while time continues its course, have all my hopes and fears— all my faculties and prospects-laid at rest on a couch of clammy earth. Anastasius.

ANECDOTES,

ILLUSTRATIVE OF THE STATE OF THE

HIGHLANDS

AFTER THE REBELLION OF 1745 *.

THE field of Culloden, and the scenes of cruelty which followed it, though fatal to the hopes of the

* Supposed to be written by sir Walter Scott.

Highlanders, who enthusiastically espoused the cause of Charles, yet did not utterly crush their hardy and predatory disposition. The clansmen retired, it is true, to the rocky fastnesses of their highest glens,-they chewed the cud of bitter reflection, and they mourned their cottages burned, and their wives and children massacred at dead of night, or arrested in melancholy flight by death amidst the snows of winter. But savage heroism was not altogether subdued. within them by calamities such as these,-calamities calculated to bend less lofty souls to the very dust of subjection. With them the effect was like that produced by attempting to curb the mountain cataract, they were divided into smaller and less important bodies, and their power was no longer forcible in its native stream; but each individual portion seemed to gain a particular character and consequence of its own, by separation from the main body, where it had been undistinguished and unobserved. It was thus that, lurking in little parties, among pine-clad precipices, in caverns known only to themselves, they now waged a minor warfare,—that which had the plundering of cattle for its object. But let us not look upon those men, driven as it were to desperation, as we do upon the wretched cow-stealers of the present day. That which is now considered as one of the basest of crimes, was then, in the eyes of the mountaineer, rather an honourable and chivalrous profession. Nothing was then more creditable than to be the leader of a daring band, to harry the low country of its live stock; and, above all, it was conceived to be perfectly fair to drive "Morayland, where every gentleman had a right to take his prey*.

"

* A great chieftain of the vale Urquhart having had his cattle stolen by the vassals of another head of a clan to the westward, and having sent a messenger with a remonstrance, had his herds restored to him, and received a letter, which still exists, containing the ароlogy, that the fellows had mistaken his orders, which were to go to the land of Moray alone," where every gentleman was entitled to take his prey."

It was about this period, and (though it may surprise many) it was not much more than fifty years ago, that Mr. R-1, a gentleman of the low country of Moray, was awakened early in the morning by the unpleasant intelligence of the Highlanders having carried off the whole of his cattle from a distant hill, grazing in Brae Moray, a few miles above the junction of the rapid rivers Findhorn and Divie, and between both. He was an active man, so that, after a few questions put to the breathless messenger, he lost not a moment in summoning and arming several servants; and, instead of taking the way to his farm, he struck at once across the conntry, in order to get as speedily as possible to a point, where the rocks and woods, hanging over the deep bed of the Findhorn, first begin to be crowned by steep and lofty mountains, receding in long and misty perspective. This was the grand pass into the boundless wastes frequented by the robbers; and here Mr. R-1 forded the river to its southern bank, and took his stand with his little party, well aware, that if he could not intercept his cattle here, he might abandon all further search after them.

The spot chosen for the ambuscade was a beautiful range of scenery known by the name of the Streens. So deep is the hollow in many places, that some of the little cottages, with which its bottom is here and there sprinkled, have Gaelic appellations, implying, that they never see the sun. There were no houses near them; but the party lay concealed amongst some huge fragments of rock, shivered by the wedging ice of the previous winter from the summit of a lofty crag, that hung half across the narrow holm where they stood. A little way further down the river the passage was contracted to a rude and scrambling foot-path, and behind them the glen was equally confined. Both extremities of the small amphitheatre were shaded by almost impenetrable thickets of birch, hazel, alder, and holly, whilst a few wild pines found a scanty subsistence for their roots, in midway air, on the face of the crags, and were twisted

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